'TUF 15' runner-up Al Iaquinta sets schedule for UFC return

This past year Al Iaquinta posted a runner-up finish on “The Ultimate Fighter 15,” but had he listened to his doctors, he could have been on the show a couple years earlier.

It’s a mistake he won’t make again.

So following a knee injury he suffered during his “TUF 15″ run, he’s pacing himself and following doctor’s orders not to rush back.

“I would have loved to get right back in the cage right after my last fight, but I tore cartilage in my knee and had to have surgery,” he recently told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio). “I was out a good amount of time. I’m just back in training and hoping to get back in there in March to get back in there to get a fight set up.”

Iaquinta (5-2-1 MMA, 0-1 UFC) was part of the grueling 15th season of “TUF,” in which fighters were locked away for 12 weeks – twice as long as most seasons. UFC officials quickly nixed the super-sized production schedule and live format, but for Iaquinta, it came a season too late.

While he enjoyed his time on the show, where he was head coach Urijah Faber’s fourth-round pick, he fought five times in the 12 weeks from March 9 to June 1, and it took a toll.

Iaquinta, though, was actually selected for the 12th season of the show in 2010, but slow-healing hands kept him off the cast. He kept breaking his hands and then rushing back to training, he said.

“I’d re-break it, and they never really healed properly,” he said. “So I learned that (lesson) with my knee. I’m going with my doctor’s precautions and listening to him.

“My knee isn’t as strong, but I just need to get it as strong as it was before the surgery. But otherwise I’m rolling and sparring, and everything is right on schedule.”

At the TUF 15 Finale, Iaquinta entered his fight with Michael Chiesa a favorite, but he ultimately suffered a first-round submission loss via rear-naked choke.

Iaquinta makes no excuses for the loss to Chiesa, who was also part of Team Faber, but he hopes he one day gets a shot to avenge the defeat to his friend. The Serra-Longo Fight Team fighter, who plans to soon hook up with Faber’s Team Alpha Male for some addition training, wants to see what they both could do with a full training camp.

“It was definitely his night,” Iaquinta said. “We had three fights in a row going into that finale fight, and it was really a matter of who would come in and do it that night. We were both banged up and hurt. But he caught me and took my back. I knew that was one of the only ways he was going to get me – by taking my back. And he got it done.

“I’d definitely like to do that fight again just so we had a full training camp and be healthy and whatnot. But yeah, as a person, we spent 13 weeks together … and we all have a special bond with each other.”

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.

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